Distant Shore
by ncfan
Summary: -Utakata x Hotaru- This is the opposite of the life he has known. Spoilers for the Anime-only Tsuchigomo Kinjutsu arc.


**Characters**: Utakata, Hotaru**  
>Summary<strong>: This is the utter opposite of the life he has known.**  
>Pairings<strong>: Utakata x Hotaru**  
>Author's Note<strong>: The subtext between them was just too thick to be ignored. Plus, _Naruto_ is an Utakata x Hotaru in-universe shipper. This bends the canon of the filler just a tiny bit near the end for storytelling purposes. Hope you enjoy it anyway. Also, do you want to know something I find hilarious? In the Japanese, Hotaru refers to Utakata as "Utakata-sama." And how, you ask, does the Hulu website subtitles translate this? _Sir_ Utakata. Apparently Hotaru thinks Utakata's a knight or something; I suppose it could tie in to the way she acts around him, but really.**  
>Disclaimer<strong>: I don't own Naruto.

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><p>Somehow, he always ends up shored in the strangest places. Harusame—<em>No. <em>That thought is stopped in its tracks. But really, Harusame used to say that he could charm anyone without trying, and he's right. Utakata really had no intention of charming these people. He just wanted time to heal and then to be able to leave.

Well, _that's _certainly not playing out as he had hoped.

Now, he's on some secluded estate with a giggly teenage girl (an heiress to an old clan but still a giggly adolescent) who won't leave him alone and an old man who wants him to stay because he's finally found someone he can talk to on equal ground and someone actually capable of keeping the girl in line.

Utakata looks at Hotaru from across a tree trunk and a small field and he can't help but marvel. She lives in a world the utter opposite of the one he has known.

It's been five years since Utakata was forced to go on the run. He doesn't think he's had a decent meal more than a dozen times since then, not counting what he's been getting on the Tsuchigomo estate. And even before then there was little; he and Harusame were nin on a small, remote island in Mizu no Kuni after all, and the old man was a big believer in austerity, even if he did feed Utakata considerably more than what he'd gotten on the streets of Kiri.

Hotaru has never had anything denied to her, except perhaps the freedom to roam freely. Utakata himself isn't quite sure what it is that causes Tonbei to be so adamant in his assertion that Hotaru can't leave the estate grounds; there are things, he suspects, that Hotaru and her keeper aren't telling him. She's lived in luxury her entire life; never starved, never spent a night outside in the rain.

Utakata looks at her, laughing, her dark gold hair flying in the air as she runs to go get something for Tonbei, from his perch high in the tree, and wonders. He wonders if Hotaru has ever tasted blood. If she's ever really known what suffering is like. The death of an old man, in Utakata's eyes, isn't enough to give someone the full measure of suffering.

No. There's no shadow in those green eyes. There's no heaviness in that bright, guileless smile.

There's been no real suffering in this girl's life. She's a total innocent. A willful, spoiled innocent, but an innocent all the same.

Distant shores indeed.

The missing nin sighs and gnaws on the mouth of his bubble blower as he's wont to do when contemplating.

"_You're going to be one of those men who smokes pipes when you get older just to have something in your mouth, aren't you?"_

Hotaru's words, when she popped out of nowhere yet again. She has a habit of popping out of nowhere on Utakata, and he can't decide whether or not she's doing it because she enjoys the way he reacts (_sharp yelp, muscles locking up, eyes staring round wildly and hand going to the kunai pouch hidden beneath his kimono_) whenever she makes herself heard.

_If only she knew _why_ I react like that_, Utakata reflects bitterly, and takes the blower from his mouth.

There's another thing.

He's been roped into training her in ninjutsu. _The girl's manipulative, I'll give her that._

Utakata doesn't know why he did it. Hotaru asked, with the sort of devoted eagerness on her face that can only come of an innocent, and the conditions he lays down are only an afterthought. Utakata agrees before he really knows what she's saying.

Her smile is nearly blinding as Utakata is roped by the neck into possibly the tightest hug he has ever had to endure.

"_Oh, thank you, Utakata-sama! Thank you so much!"_

_Utakata sucks in his breath. "Hotaru," he says flatly, "You are invading my personal space." In fact she's got her head buried in his shoulder and that _really_ makes him uncomfortable. "And I can barely breathe," he adds. In truth, Hotaru's only pushing down on Utakata's windpipe a little bit; it's uncomfortable but not all that painful._

"_Oh, sorry, Utakata-sama." Hotaru pulls away, blushing heavily, and smoothes her hair down nervously. "Tomorrow morning, then?"_

_The young man nods. "No later than 0700."_

_If the early time Utakata wants Hotaru to be awake at all disgruntles her, she doesn't show it. She nods and smiles brightly, and starts to walk back towards the main estate, humming something under her breath._

_Utakata stares after her, bemused, and runs his deft, practiced fingers along the steel bubble blower before putting it to his lips._

What an odd life he's fallen into. But as Utakata doesn't want to admit it, he thinks he could grow to like living in this place, if it weren't for the shadow of pursuing hunter nin hanging over his head.

At least here, on the most distant shore he has ever known, he finds no trace of the corruption of his past life.

(_And she's really not such a bad girl. _Utakata's afterthought is half-ignored, and he goes back to blowing bubbles, wondering why her voice keeps running through his head.)


End file.
